Sam Renseiw –Two Recent Movies

sam_r
More Landscaping Views (2010, 54MB, 3:47 min)

sam_r
Art and Traffic (2010, 14MB, 1:00 min, silent)

We haven’t had anything from the indispensable Sam Renseiw
for a little while so, just to make Monday more tolerable for us all,
here are two recent pieces, both small gems.
I particularly like the Lumière, ‘Art and Traffic’

Konx-om-Pax –Twin Portal

shanno
Twin Portal (2010, 11MB, 2:00 min)

Biog:

Konx-om-Pax is 25 year old Glasgow based Director/Animator/Sound Designer
Tom Scholefield. In recent years worked with Warp Records, DFA Records,
No-Fun Productions, Universal Everything and Optimo Espacio.

Normally I find it an effort to care much for digitally constructed worlds
with a kind of sci-fi undercurrent; it all seems a bit easy (no matter, of course,
that it probably isn’t) and usually more than a bit banal.
However this guy does it with considerable style and I found myself
drawn in. It’s the level of detail, the care with which its put
together and the sheer verve and -yes- beauty of it.
The audio is great too & I like the bipartite stucture of the piece.

Marina Zurkow: Slurb – single channel animation

slurb
Slurb (excerpt) (2009, 24 MB, 3:43 min.)

“Slurb” was originally commissioned for a 2009 Tampa, Fla., arts festival.
The 18 min. continuous loop with an ambient electronic pop-inspired soundtrack
paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic future world that’s been destroyed by some
sort of alluvial pollution-triggered catastrophe.
By Marina Zurkow.
Music by Lem Jay Ignacio. Additional animation: Jen Kelly

Martha Deed – War and Peace

War and Peace
War and Peace (2006, 35.4MB, 2:34 min.)

Some delicate & tough poetry of the everyday &
the often overlooked (& thence of all we are & of
our place in the natural world too) from Martha Deed in 2006.

Shannon Noble – Newt

newt
Newt (2010?, 47MB, 1:48 min)

We haven’t had anything from Shannon Noble for a long time.
He’s quite elusive. His blog springs up, then disappears, then appears
again under a different name. Currently most of his stuff just seems to
be sitting, unlinked, in a folder on his site.
His work is always interesting (in the strong sense that one can
always learn from it) and hardly ever showy. Maybe his lack of need to show off
or jump up and down saying look at me, even when he’d be justified in so doing
is tied in with his apparent reluctance to promote his work.
Don’t get me wrong -I approve of the former -it makes the viewer do some work and there
are rewards to be had here for doing that work.
Here’s the first of two pieces, a bit like Robert Croma’s piece earlier this week,
not at all in mood or content but simply in being by someone who clearly knows
exactly what they are doing.
The use of sound is both deeply eccentric and wonderful.
More next week.

Edward Picot – Combine Harvester

la descente
Combine Harvester (2010, 68MB, 2:23 min)

A eclogue of sorts from Edward Picot; somewhat noisy, somewhat dusty
but evocative of the real British countryside and a little bit thrilling too.

Robert Croma – La Descente

la descente
La Descente (2010, 96MB, 8:21 min)

It’s always great to have a new piece from Robert Croma
recently this has been an all too rare event.
Great to report that his first in a year is as good as it is.
I know that the people-going-down-steps/up-or-down-escalators/though-doors movies
have come to constitute almost a micro-genre, but this is an exceptionally
meticulous and rich example.
In particular what makes it for me is the decision (wherever – camera, edit – in the workflow
it happened) to leave in the faces who gaze boldly back at the camera.

A lot of Croma’s work employs subtly deployed but thorough post-production
to heighten and poeticize further his material. Here it’s rather his visual acuity
and the years of experience accumulated both in still and moving image which leads
to this simple but devastating handling of his original footage.
Similarly his use of sound is unobtrusive but exceedingly well judged.

I hope it’s not a year to the next one.

Rick Silva – Krummholz Formation

krummholz formation
Krummholz Formation (2010, 112MB, 16:48 min)

It’s always a pleasure to post new work from Rick Silva here
and this piece is no exception.
His work has been heading somewhere strange, gripping
and utterly his own for some time now.
I find this loyalty to a very personal vision both admirable
and exemplary. I’m fascinated to see whether further development
along this path is possible or whether there will at some point be a sharp
change of direction.
(Once again with this piece I really want to see it
in a gallery -nobody is more adept or at home at work for the net than Silva
but I can’t help feeling that this work needs space and distance…)

Christophe Gendre – Travelling

Christophe Gendre: Travelling
Travelling (2004, 185 MB, 11:33 min)

Carefully made & delicious to watch travelogue
(although I think it conflates a number of different trips,
so in one sense it’s about travel itself as much as place)
from French artist Christophe Gendre.
More soon.

Millie Niss – Skyway

skyway
Skyway (2009, 39 MB, 1:53 min)

A couple of months before her untimely death last year Millie Niss
sent me this video –

‘I have been working for a long time on and off (mostly off) these
days on a video showing industrial ruins on the outskirts of Buffalo,
shot from an elevated highway which is scheduled to be torn down…’

I remember thinking how beautiful and evocative it was and I assumed
Millie would publish it on the Sporkworld Blog in due course.
Sadly this never happened.
The other day I came across it & asked Millie’s mother and collaborator,
Martha Deed, for permission to post it here, which she gave,
so it’s a pleasure tinged with sadness to do so.

We’re going to take a summer break now.
We’ll be back on September 20th but in the meantime we’ll leave you
with this memorial to a fine artist & a fine human being.

Two Loops – Michael Szpakowski

loop6sec
Loop (2010, 6 MB, 6 sec, loop)

loopwatch
Watch (2010, 19 MB, 18 sec, loop)

By Michael Szpakowski.

Direct Language

pink tall bike
Diect Language 5.0 (2010, 74 MB, 6:26 min)

Steven Ball has re-started his Direct Language project & this was the first piece
of the new sequence.
I think it is quite breathtaking.
It strikes me as very much in a relatively recent British experimental film tradition
where a quite austere formalism can engender the most extraordinary beauty.
There’s always the danger of a failure of nerve, the pill being quite needlessly sugared
and nothing such happens here.
Not only is it haunting & lovely, there’s food for thought here too,
the lack of glibness & the refusal to cuddle up to the viewer meaning
it sustains repeated viewing.

Pink Tall Bike

pink tall bike
Pink Tall Bike (2010, 50 MB, 2:16 min)

One of those does-what-it-says-on-the-can movies.
Made by Mike Stoddard & Ryan Lynch who say:

”This is our latest creation made from free bikes and parts,
comprised of three womens’ frames, bed frame iron (front fork),
and an old ATV shock.
Filmed on the Woonsocket River Bikeway in Rhode Island. ‘

…not much to add except to say it’s very diverting &
WANT ONE!

A Short History of Virtual Hiking

virtualhiking6
A Short History of Virtual Hiking (2005, 9.1MB, 3:47 min.)

Originally posted in 2006.

‘Not sure it

Rupert Howe – The Wicker Man Remade

wickerman
The Wicker Man (2010, 12 MB, 1:09 min)

wickerman live
The Wicker Man Live (2010, 7 MB, 3:31 min)

Rupert Howe is always doing interesting things.
He’s also an early adopter of the sort of tech that in-my-old-age I
would cautiously leave a few months to see how it turns
out, so many of the interesting things he does mystify me
somewhat at first.
SO.. here he seems to have got given (?) lots of extras
(in what universe does this occur?) to remake a section of
cult British horror film The Wicker Man on Hampstead Heath.
The results are jaw dropping in two ways.
Jaw droppingly charmingly-funny.
And jaw droppingly odd.
Most of his work is essentially some combination of these
two axes. ( Plus serious skills)
As an added bonus there a kind of Making-Of-The-Wicker-Man-Remake
which apparently was originally streamed live from his mobile.
I didn’t even know you could do that.
If anything the ‘making-of’ piece surpasses the substantive one on the
Howe strangeness scale. Even his friends & colleagues seem touched too
by a species of benign insanity.
Long may he flourish.

Sun Capture – Julianne Swartz

suncapture
Sun Capture (1999, 9.6 MB, 1:23 min.)

Transferring the reflection of a natural occurrence (the movement of the sun)
from outdoors to indoors, Brooklyn-based artist Julianne Swartz creates
her site-specific installation “Sun Capture” with existing architecture, metal pole,
mirror, sun, and wind.

Alan Sondheim: large tree-scan world images

Treee
treee (2006, 2.28MB, 1:03 min)

treees 3
treees 3 (2006, 5.86MB, 38 sec)

treees 8
treees 8 (2006, 9.15MB, 58 sec)

“similar to a scanning electron microscope, two images of a moving tree
with enormous detail were stitched together, warped, merged, and
analyzed at every stage. the result is a planetary configuration; one can travel
for at least an hour or two through the detailing. at times threads or
tubes appear; at times there are planes, sharpened edges, odd holes and
gaps. a tetrahedral mapping was employed.

it is this acute exploration of acute angles of inner worlds that
fascinates me. the mp4 file is small and an enormous amount of detail
is lost, but you get the idea. there are videos as well of course.
here is the resurrection of encapsulated movement-into-landscape of a
five-story tree outside the virtual environments laboratory at west
virginia”

Alan Sondheim

Donna Kuhn – Please Don’t Look Like A Pear

Applause
Please Don’t Look Like A Pear (2010, 10 MB, 3:22 min)

I love Donna Kuhn’s work.
I’ve rhapsodised about it here before, so I’ll just note, first,
that she continues to develop in the most thoughtful & interesting of ways
& second that this video is very funny, poetic
& scarier than most horror movies.
( Donna: ‘people don’t believe that these are completely unembellished
craigslist personals ads’
)
To do all three – a coup!
More soon please Donna!

Studio Banana TV Interviews Pablo Valbuena

pablo_valbuena
Interview with Pablo Valbuena (2009, 43 MB, 3:46 min)

Studio Banana TV interviews visual artist and architect Pablo Valbuena.
After working in digital media designing virtual architectures for videogames,
he currently looks for new ways of using light to introduce the dimensions of
time and movement in urban spaces, altering the perception of physical space
through projected virtual realities.

One Minute, Volume 4

Dinosaur
Martin Pickles – Dinosaur  (2010, 130 MB, 1:01 min)

1961 Revisited.
Nicki Rolls – 1961 Revisited  (2010, 114 MB, 58 secs)

Two pieces from a touring screening of one minute films,
the fourth such from British filmmaker Kerry Baldry.

It’s a really well put together and gripping hour
(transparency dictates I confess I have a piece in it
but I won’t foist that on you here), with a strike rate well above
most of this kind of compilatation.

Here are two of my favourite pieces; both, in different
ways, little gems of cinematic poetry.
Although Martin Pickle’s piece is amusing there’s
something enchanting about the changing seasonal
landscape & light of West London and how it manifests on screen,
which raises the work from anecdote to something more complicated
and lasting.

The Nicki Rolls piece had me in the palm of its hand within about a second.
(I’m a total sucker for near stillness and for the movement of light)
Then I started to think about what exactly I was watching.
You might like to give it some thought too.
Again, the twist breaks the confines of the one minute form
to resonate long after.

I haven’t see the other three compilations but I hope we could maybe
feature a couple of pieces from each in the not too distant future.

Next week we’ll have a piece by Kerry herself.

Brantley Jones Again

Mountains
Mountains – “Interlude” (2010, 105 MB, 2:11 min)

Wistful, quirky & -well, just quite lovely – bit of filmmaking from
Brantley Jones who squeezes real magic – what feels in part like a summoning up of a child’s
eye view of the world (in the best possible sense) – from minimal resources.
Don’t be fooled though – there’s both eye and technique at work here.
We’ve shown his work here before & on the evidence of this will certainly
do so again.

The music is Interlude by Mountains from the album Sewn

More Robert Todd

thunder
Thunder (2004, 178 MB, 11:00 min)

Quite, quite beautiful!

Original editorial

Robert Todd – Ground Play

ground play
Ground Play (extract) (2009, 64 MB, 5:15 min)

I stumbled across Robert Todd’s work by accident & I’m glad that I did.
Judging by the extracts on his site, one of which we’re posting here, he will bear
a good deal of further investigation.

Here I love the use of oblique angles, cropping &c. to create a world both highly abstracted
yet naggingly familiar (and very beautiful).

There’s also an interesting dynamic going on between the probing camerwork & the
thoughtful and restrained editing.

There’s an interview with Todd here and you can buy DVDs of his work .

Sondheim – Watching Them

watchingthem
Watching Them (2010, 14MB, 38 secs)

ALL

ALL-BEARING Omniparous
ALL-CHEERING That which gives gaiety to all.
ALL-CONQUERING That which subdues every thing.
ALL-DEVOURING That which eats up every thing.
ALL-FOURS A low game at cards, played by two.
ALL-HAIL All health.
ALL-HALLOWN The time about All-saints day.
ALL-HALLOWTIDE The term near All-saints, or the first of November.
ALL-HEAL A species of iron-wort.
ALL-JUDGING That which has the sovereign right of judgment.
ALL-KNOWING Omniscient, allwise.
ALL-SEEING That beholds every thing.
ALL-SOULS DAY The day on which supplications are made for all souls
by the church of Rome; the second of November.
ALL-SUFFICIENT Sufficient to any thing.
ALL-WISE Possessed of Infinite Wisdom

(From John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 1825 ed.)

38 seconds of strange & aching beauty from Alan Sondheim.
The text above accompanied the original posting
of the vid on the Netbehaviour & Webartery lists.

Kozyndan – nudabranch love

kozyndan
nudabranch love (2006, 1.7MB, QTVR)

Kozyndan is the joint pseudonym of Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife
illustrator team Kozue and Dan Kitchens, known in particular for their
whimsical and occasionally absurd illustrations of modern cityscapes.

Veronique Hubert – Two Movies

A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau
A Cube Bavards (2009, 20MB, 2:47 min)

A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau
A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau (2009, 52MB, 9:51 min)

OK -comparisons, I’m aware, can sometimes obscure as much as they illuminate but
imagine, if you will, a female, French, slightly more lapidary, Matthew Barney and it does
seem to fit the bill.
Exemplary and wonderful strangeness from Veronique Hubert.

Sam Renseiw – Fragmented Occurences

Fragmented Occurences
Fragmented Occurences (2010, 67MB, 4:33 min.)

It’s a little while since we featured anything from the splendid Sam
Renseiw
, so here’s a recent piece.
In contrast to many of his films, which have an incredibly strong
sense of a particular place, this was apparently composed
from odds and ends of footage from various locations during the last
few months.
I think it works beautifully; it’s instructive to see Sam intervening,
perhaps a little more than usual, at the editing level.
(His camera work is always very distinctive – there’s often a sense
-true or not- that many pieces are largely composed in the shooting.)

Whatever the case, this is, as always, a wonderful and utterly distinctive voice.

PS This is our 1000th post of the new series. Many thanks to all who have sent words of encouragement & appreciation. It makes the time spent working on DVblog feel doubly worthwhile.

Two from Kate Dickinson

19th
19th ( 2010, 1MB, 1:00 min, silent)

are you ready
Are You Ready? ( 2008, 20MB, 52 secs)

Two contrasting short movies from Leeds, UK, artist Kate Dickinson.
The second should provoke a smile (did for me) but it’s
the first, in which not a great deal happens & in a deliberately
confined area of the screen to boot, that I particularly liked.
There’s a melancholy about its view of an overcast
Leeds landscape which is amplified by cropping a good deal of it out.
The resulting minimalism marshalls the viewer’s attention in a quite hypnotic way.

Liz Sterry – Borders

Borders
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)

Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school
in Writtle, Essex, UK*.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.

*Transparency – where I currently teach.